


By Your Side, In Your Arms

by Rainwater_Apothecary



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: After the canon, Aged Up, Ambassador Katara (Avatar), Bloodbending, Bloodbending (Avatar), Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Iroh ships it, Katara rights, Miscarriage, Zuko drinks respect women juice, i'm rewatching the series and this happened, katara realizes some things, past kataang, the gaang is growing up fam, ultrasounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28803768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainwater_Apothecary/pseuds/Rainwater_Apothecary
Summary: Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe is having a rough time after the war. She's not really in love with her partner, her best friend is across the world, and the full moon rises like clockwork.Zuko is optimistic that there can be a good use for his friend's skills. He refuses to call it a curse, she gets more than enough of that from Aang and Sokka.At the end of the day, Katara realizes some things, Zuko believes in her, and they lean on one another in a big world made better by tiny hands.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 128





	By Your Side, In Your Arms

_“I just don’t see how any bending can be truly evil. You taught me that, Katara.” Zuko’s golden eyes held such innocent earnestness that the waterbender couldn’t keep meeting them. She held her upper arm and turned away, blind to the garden around them._

_“You’ve never seen bloodbending.”_

__

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_Okay, she had him there._

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_“You can do that?” Why did he look so excited? It felt more like a curse than something she could just ‘do’._

__

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_“No, look at me Katara. Please.” He added sheepishly. Still getting used to not being a demanding royal._

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_She sighed and a hot tear slid down her cheek. She still heard her friends’ screams and Hama’s laughter. The wild-haired cold-eyed witch._

__

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_Oh. Zuko was talking to her again._

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_Warm hands rested on her shoulders while he respectfully tried to get her to listen. Warm, firebending hands. Her friend’s hands. She took a waterlogged breath and crumpled._

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_“It was so scary, Zuko.” She shuddered into his chest, too blinded by fear and cold to note how well she fit in his arms. Katara always noticed that. He held her and where others would shush her, the royal just stroked her hair and told her it would be okay. That she was the strongest woman he’d ever met._

__

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_She would bend the moisture off his shirt later, for now she held him like the day they truly became friends and let herself be comforted._

\- 

“There’s gotta be something you can use it for.” Katara rolled her eyes in exasperated fondness. It wasn’t often that she got to see the young Firelord, but she liked him this way: barefooted and leaning from a tree he’d raced Aang up. Aang had won, of course, but Katara had the feeling the race was more to get the Avatar out of their hair than an actual feat of agility. 

Besides, had Zuko meant to win he would have made sure to incite the ‘no bending’ rule. 

The Firelord blew his fringe out of his face and dropped an apple down to her waiting basket. It wasn’t every full moon the Gaang was able to get back together, but she noticed that it was usually the firebender who remembered and made the effort. 

Sometimes it felt like he was the only one who put in the work to get to know her. 

Toph did, sometimes. Suki was _easily_ her best female friend… 

But Sokka and Aang would never see her as the grown woman waterbending master that she is. 

Never see her as a girl who feared her bending above all else. 

Zuko did. She knew he did. 

All of the elements had the ability to hurt or heal, she had once consoled their firebender in the night. In her tribe, fire meant warmth and without it they would have all been long dead and buried. Water was similar in his nation. Not a lot of Calderians knew how to swim, but they all needed water to drink and cool off. 

Air meant suffocation and flight. Earth meant stability and entombment. 

Blood was blood. 

Surely there was no upside to a skill cultivated in hatred? 

\- 

“Yknow, I was thinking.” The Firelord looked over at the visiting Ambassador as she raised an eyebrow. 

“Dangerous, make sure you don’t hurt yourself.” She smirked, taking a seat near where he was lounging at his desk. He huffed. 

“No, but really, Ambassador Katara. One of my people’s hospitals could use a skill like yours to help young mothers.” 

Katara went still. 

“You can’t ask me to perform abortions with bloodbending-“ 

Zuko sat up straight so quickly he hit his head on the chair. 

“No! I wouldn't do that." He let out a breath and started over. "One of the head nurses approached me the other day and asked if it would be possible for a waterbender to be able to check on a baby’s health.” 

Katara’s blue eyes widened. 

“In the womb?” She breathed. 

He nodded, a smile forming on his lips and lighting up his eyes. 

“So I was thinking, what if you could use your abilities to trace out the infant to _show_ the mother before the baby was born?” 

He raised his own palms horizontally a few inches apart and formed a small dragon made of fire, setting it to flitter about the room. The sight still left her a little breathless, that something so delicate and vibrant could be made from the very element that had ravaged the boy in front of her. She smiled. 

“Okay.” She cut him off with a sideways hand motion. “But I won’t be practicing on anyone until I know I can get it right.” 

Zuko grinned. 

“What should I do?” 

She pulled up short and tilted her head in confusion. 

Zuko caught the little dragon in his palm and quietly closed his hand. When he looked up at her his eyes were warm and alight like the fire had gone straight to his soul. 

“I’m not going to let you practice on my people until I know you can do it.” 

She blinked at him. 

Then she reeled back in horror. 

“ _Zuko_ I’m _not_ using bloodbending on you!” 

The Firelord was shrugging out of his over-robe and standing up. 

“Katara, I’m telling you it’s okay-“ 

“But it’s not, Zuko! It’s not okay!” She shouted, shaking her head and balling her fists. 

He stilled. 

“I just… I know you better than that, Katara. You saved the world. You saved _me_. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met and yeah you have your temper but I’m a firebender, it comes with the territory.” She snorted. If there was anyone who wouldn’t put her on a pedestal, it was him. 

She lost her breath when he leveled his gaze at her. 

“I trust you.” 

“But I don’t!” She cried. “We fought for so long just to _end_ this war- the war, and I’m not about to risk your life on a stupid experiment!” Her hair loopies bounced as she shook her head violently. She heard him take a step back. 

“I won’t. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do, Katara. It just- Spirits it just _hurts_ so much to see you tear yourself to pieces every time the moon fills! When you’re not here, when I can’t _see_ you…” He pressed a palm to his eye. 

They met gazes between his fingers. 

“I worry.” He held out a hand to stop her from her inevitable tiraid. “I know you can handle yourself, Katara. That’s never been in question. It just sucks that you don’t have anyone who will help you shoulder this thing you see as a burden.” 

Spirits, he looked so _sad_. She sighed. 

“I…you _know_ how it makes me feel.” 

He nodded quietly. 

_Dirty._

\- 

_It was one of the first full moons since the coronation and he’d found her wandering restlessly. She’d tried bending one of the ponds, but it didn’t slow the thunder in her veins. When she closed her eyes she saw the people around her as strings of blood flowing up and down and all throughout the body. Veins and arteries. No skin, no bones, just blood._

_It had caused her to shriek when he walked into the garden with his silent steps. Blasted Blue Spirit, she cursed to herself. He’d winced at the sound and then winced again when the movement tensed the wound on his diaphragm._

\- 

“You don’t have to touch my blood, Katara. Just trace what you see.” She raised an eyebrow at her friend as he tied up his ceremonially long hair. “Veins, right? That’s what you called them?” The breath left Katara’s lungs as she figured out what he meant. 

Reaching out with her bending, she scooped up a stream of water from the bowl her friend kept in his study for her visits. The cool element always steadied her nerves and made her feel grounded. It reminded her of home. 

Raising her hand by the back of her wrist, Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe closed her eyes and let the water in her hands trace the water in his body. 

This wasn’t like releasing chi blockages. This was too _real_. …It also wasn’t as invasive as gathering up a person’s own body and bending it against them. 

This was art. 

Her eyes flew open at Zuko’s awe-struck ‘woa’. 

There, floating about a foot above his skin was a perfect recreation of the way his blood flowed up and down his arms and spiraled around his heart. 

The water dropped unceremoniously onto the carpet. 

She couldn’t hold his heart in her hands again. Not when he looked at her like she was the most amazing person he knew. Like he cherished her. 

Granted, the boy had told her as much when she needed to hear it, but when he got that look in his eye when she astonished him and he was just so _happy_ to see her thrive and grow… it hit differently. 

And his _eyes_ … 

And the Agni Kai with Azula... 

She had to leave. 

“Katara! Wait! I’m sorry if I pushed too much!” If he called out anything further she didn’t hear him as his study door slammed between them. 

\- 

_She ended up in that garden again. It felt like every time she visited the Fire Nation she wound up in this garden looking up at Yue and wishing things had been different._

_The baby inside of her wouldn’t live long enough to leave her. She knew it, like how she knew when a broken bone was back in place. She was a healer, she was mother._

_Well._

_She was a mother for as long as the little life inside of her would hold on._

_She just wished she could see her baby before the little life left them._

_Blue eyes shone with tears before the waterbender got up and went not to the baby’s father but to her best friend._

_“Katara? Is everything okay?” Zuko answered his door, hair a mess and squinting at the light from the hallway. It was approaching midnight and firebenders woke up early, she knew. All the same, she had to ask. She needed him._

_“Can…can I come in, Zuko? I need…I need my best friend right now.”_

_His eyes widened but he opened the door without looking for further reasoning. She loved him for it._

_And that was the problem._

_She sighed and crawled into the big bed he occupied alone._

_“Katara?” His sleep-hoarse voice gave her the shivers but she just reached out and held his warm hand in her frigid one. His eyes widened with shock and he cupped her hand in both of his to rub warmth back into it._

_“Just…Just stay with me?” The man she’d grown up beside nodded, eyes wide like a child._

_“Should- Do you want some light? I can light… some candles.” He was floundering and it made her smile._

_“Yeah, one or two. I’d like to be able to see what I’m doing.”_

_Zuko coughed and shot a bead of flame at the taper on his desk and the candle on each nightstand. He didn’t have a Fire Lady, and everything in his room echoed it back at them. He would have blushed had he not been so terrified._

_“Katara…? Let me know if I can talk, love.” Her weak smile flickered into view at the nickname. They’d started using it when Katara had been sleep deprived into using terms of endearments on inanimate objects. They ignored how it made Aang uncomfortable because it made Katara laugh._

_The Ambassador needed reasons to laugh._

_She let out a long breath and leaned back against his side. His arm encircled her loosely, instinctually. If she closed her eyes she could imagine how easy it would be to belong here._

_Instead, she reached out and stirred some water from the vase by his desk and began tracing the blood she felt in her veins. In her womb._

_Zuko let out a breathless ‘oh’ when he watched the little life form between Katara’s caring hands._

_“She. She’s a girl.” Katara let the tears fall. Zuko held her, steady and quiet. He didn’t ask questions, he just let her ride this out. Giving his strength and his company when nothing else would be enough._

_The little girl that would have been named after Katara's mother formed between her barely shaking hands._

_“She’s perfect.” Katara wept, letting the water fill in delicate eyelids closed over unseeing eyes. Tiny fingers balled into sleeping fists. A tiny, perfect infant the size of a grown man’s fist lay just above Katara’s belly, sleeping safely in her arms._

_‘Are you…?’ He wanted to ask. He wanted to say a million and one things, ask a billion more. ‘Where’s Aang?’ ‘Does he know?’ ‘Why are you crying?’_

_He kept his peace and held his crying friend as she held her unborn child._

\- 

She woke up two days later to blood and agony and a scream that would never leave tiny, perfect lungs. 

“Why didn’t you tell me? Katara she could have been an airbender!” 

“GET OUT.” Katara threw a pillow at her partner, blinded by pain and tears. She wanted to rot. Bury her beside her daughter. 

She caught a glimpse of ceremonially long hair as the airbender fled her wrath. 

“Katara? Love, I’m so… I’m so sorry.” He choked around his own tears. He didn’t leave the doorway, didn’t enter her space unless she invited him. 

It should have been him, she realized. 

The man who mourned her daughter with her should have been that daughter’s father. 

“Zuko…” She crumpled into her knees, sobbing in the dark, her womb empty and her shoulders cold. She didn’t know how the firebender saw her hand in the dark, but his fingers slotted between hers and her mattress depressed beside her. He didn’t ask. He kept his peace. 

He held her. 

Her womb was empty, but her shoulders weren’t cold. 

\- 

Later she would wonder why she had gone to Zuko to share her baby’s last days instead of Aang or Sokka, but then she would wonder why it was a mystery at all. 

There were tears, raised voices, Aang was confused, Sokka was incredulous, Katara was disgusted. She had gone about this all wrong. The elders hadn’t blessed her before she got pregnant, no one had searched the stars or even fastened her wrist to her beloved. She hadn’t wanted to be bound, she realized. 

Their fight sent the Avatar away, tears in his eyes and anger on his face. Katara went home. Sokka took her home. Zuko kept his peace. 

\- 

Carrying around her aching heart and her empty soul, Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe began again. 

She wandered among her people, head held high, her mother’s necklace still proudly in place. How had she almost let Aang talk her into taking it off? Zuko had never mentioned it. 

Hell, even when they were enemies he’d kept it safe for her. At the time she had thought it was a fellow prisoner who had burned the edges off the ribbon enough to keep it from fraying, but she had once seen Zuko do the same movement on one of Toph’s pants and she knew. She knew the prince didn’t have the patience for sewing, but he could singe. 

It didn’t even leave charcoal streaks, was how cleanly he’d looked after her most prized possession. 

Walking beside her grandmother one morning, Katara paused, taking in her tribe. Her family. Her home. 

Tears would fall if she let them in this weather. 

“Look at them all, Gran-Gran.” A mittened hand came up to cover hers where it was looped around the older woman’s arm. 

“We wouldn’t be here without you, Katara. You and Sokka saved us. Now, would you like to see the new healing huts I wrote to you about?” 

The Ambassador felt her heart swell. 

“Yes.” 

\- 

_It was in that healing hut a few months later that Katara revealed a new face to a grateful mother._

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_She breathed out a steady breath, holding her bending with confident certainty._

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_Then, above a nervous mother’s stomach a tiny, beautiful form began to appear. Delicate eyelashes, strong, Earth Nation hands, a serious expression that looked so much like his father’s when he was thinking. The woman thanked the master again and again, having hope for the first time since her husband had been called away from her side. Being alone and pregnant was a trial Katara could sympathize with, she realized. The only time she had someone by her side when she had been pregnant was when she went to the Firelord on a dark, cold night. She shook her head mentally to get **that** trivia out of her mind. _

\- 

News of the assassination reached Katara when she was in Kyoshi getting supplies. Her basket hit the dock as it tumbled from numb hands. 

She had to get to the Fire Nation. She had to get to the Fire Nation _now_. 

“Katara! You know it’ll be a long trip, even if we had a balloon.” Sokka held her shaking hands as Suki rubbed her back. They were all keyed up and ready to fight for Zuko, Suki flexing with barely restrained warrior’s blood. 

Without a balloon, or a certain flying bison, all the friends could do was wait for news and board the fastest ship available. 

A ship made faster by an enraged waterbending Master. 

“Katara! Calm down! Getting yourself hurt will do more harm than good!” Sokka held her by the arms and plead with her. 

“I can’t just do nothing, Sokka!” 

Besides, the full moon was coming. 

She could feel it. 

\- 

“Zuko!” She called out, running to his bedside as soon as his guards had been pushed out of the way by a wall of water. They’d be fine, she just needed them to _move_. 

Spirits, his breathing was ragged. The waterbenders who sat beside his bed looked up with relief when she ran into the room. 

“Master Katara.” They both bowed, fist-to-hand in Earth Nation style. Refugees. Even in her frenzied thoughts Katara’s chest warmed with pride that Zuko had managed to make his country a safe place to build a life. It had been an uphill battle. Every day, every decision, every breath he took had to be wrenched from advisors and self-serving nobles who had never worked a customer service job in their lives, as Zuko would grumble to himself after a particularly bad council meeting. It always made Katara and Iroh share a private smile. Iroh knew The Jasmine Dragon would be good for his nephew. Katara had had her doubts, but as Zuko sat on a cushion, shaking out his hair, and griping about how his people deserved better than some ingrate who would ask to speak to the manager, she felt only impossibly fond. 

Iroh had been called on as soon as the Fire Sages had decreed the Fire Nation would gain more from telling the world their leader lived than died. Katara had heard as soon as the blade had sunk into his back. The assassin had relied on the poison coating their knife to bring the Firelord down, buying the healers precious time. 

There was no way to know how much the blade had severed, and the waterbender healers could only keep the swelling cool. 

This needed a Master. 

Katara’s hands flew to hold one of his. He was trembling in his sleep, kept under by numbing teas and kept alive by waterbending infusions. Zuko, her Zuko, had been stabbed in the back and lay there for a week before she could get to him. 

This should never have happened. 

“I agree, Master Katara, but there was nothing we could have done. My nephew is a stubborn man.” 

1) She had said that out loud and 

2) Iroh was here 

She released a sigh of relief and crumpled at Zuko’s side as soon as the tea master had sent the other healers from the room. 

Iroh watched as the strong woman his nephew had befriended all those years ago brushed his bangs from his face with a look of deep concern and love that reflected his own heart. 

“Do we know what kind of poison the bitch used on him?” Iroh started a touch at Katara’s new vocabulary, but she was … 25 now. Agni, how time flies. 

He merely shook his head and picked up the tea leaves his son had been dosed with while Katara looked over the notes the healers left each other. He looked up when she let out a low growl and tucked the opiates into his sleeve. Zuko deserved better tea than this! 

The waterbending Master stalked over to the thick curtains that had been pulled over the windows of the room the nation’s leader had been hidden in. Moonlight poured into the room like Katara had upended a deep bucket of starlight into her friend’s sickroom. She nodded tersely and cracked her knuckles. Two days until the full moon. 

\- 

It was time, and her hands were shaking. 

It was time. 

Her hands were shaking. 

No. She was Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe and she had gotten his permission before. 

Long, thin fingers danced through the night air, feeling for touches of tainted blood and bringing them to the surface. 

Master Katara didn’t look away from her patient the entire night, holding out a hand to bend the warm tea from the cup Iroh passed her instead of taking her eyes off him. 

Bile and toxins, dark liquid and blood pooled up between Zuko’s lips while he lay drifting between his uncle and his best friend. Katara passed them all into a bucket at her side and kept sifting through every centimeter of blood in her beloved’s body. 

His spine would survive, he would walk with little trouble. The weather might give him some discomfort, but his healer had every intention to be on hand whenever he needed her from now on. It was his lungs she was scared for. 

Like folding a delicate paper crane, Katara moved her fingers through the air above Zuko, cleaning out his bronchus one by one. Beneath her hands, tracing every warm memory she had of his hands, his blood began to heal. 

Swiping sweat from her brow with the back of one hand and depositing it in the waste bucket, Katara took in a breath. 

“I’m going to have to wake him.” 

Iroh looked startled from the tea brewing setup he had on the table at the foot of the bed but nodded. 

“The doctor knows best.” His trust in her was palpable and it buoyed her. 

“Alright. Time to wake up, my love.” 

What the tea master thought on the unfamiliar nickname was his alone. Iroh returned to watching his son through the fragrant steam coming from the pots before him. 

With a deep, back shuddering cough, the Firelord’s breath followed the waterbender’s hands as they pulled him from unconsciousness. 

He groaned. 

It was the most beautiful sound Iroh and Katara had ever heard. 

“Uncle? Why are you making tea in the middle of the night?” Katara’s laugh started her friend into looking up at her. 

When had she grown so? Zuko could have sworn it was just last week that she had come to him in tears saying her and Aang had broken up. The waterbender always had deep eyes; eyes too mature for a 14 year old. They mirrored his own, he had noticed even the first time they locked eyes. 

But like this, care-worn and determined, eyes bright and jaw set, Katara was more _Katara_ than he had ever seen her. 

“Hi.” Agni, he sounded like hell. 

“Hi.” Katara replied, wiping her tears with the back of one hand. 

“Master Katara saved your life, Firelord Zuko. Again.” The old man thought he was being slick, Zuko thought to himself. Still, he was right. 

The Firelord offered his best friend a weak smile. 

“Again. We have to stop meeting like this, Master Katara.” He tried to push his hair from his face but upon seeing his arm shift his healer had pushed it back onto the bed and brushed his hair away unprompted. She had always been good like that. Knowing what he was thinking. She laughed wetly and tapped his shoulder like she would have punched him had he been up for it. It made him smile. 

“Well if your royal hot-headedness would stop running headfirst into things without his waterbending Master nearby.” 

Zuko chuckled. 

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I-“ His eyes widened and he shot upright. 

Or he should have, had Master Katara not shoved him back down as soon as she saw him move. 

“Uncle! The security detail! It was Kyohei’s anniversary tomorrow, are they alright?” 

Iroh and Katara swapped looks before the old general began to beam. 

“You and two other guards were hurt, but you got the worst of it. I am told Mr. Kyohei’s daughter is on her way, so he has his hands full enough without a worrying monarch!” The old man laughed with a hand on his belly. Zuko’s relief was physically present as his brow relaxed and his body went loose. 

“Good…good. That’s good.” His eyelids were getting heavy again, and the steam smelled so good… 

“Hey, jerk-bender.” 

Zuko’s smirk twitched a little at the nickname, showing Katara he was still with them even though his eyes were closed. 

“I mean it, you have to start looking out for yourself. Your country needs you.” 

Ceremonially long hair whispered against the silk pillowcases and though he was bone-tired his eyebrows furrowed. He knew his duty. Even dead tired and on the edge of sleep, he knew. 

He had always known, she realized. He had never abandoned his people, even when he was wrongly exiled with a blinding wound and a boatload of strangers. 

If only their Avatar had had such dedication. 

To her and to the cause. 

She realized she was stroking his hair only when he leaned into her hand in his sleep. 

“You are a great gift to my nephew and our country, Master Katara. You honor us by coming to our aid.” She met Iroh’s eyes for the first time in a week and nodded. 

“I never should have left.” 

Iroh paused before smiling at her through the steam. 

“I am sure this is news my nephew should hear first… But I am nothing if not an old gossip. Ambassador, would you do me the honor of sharing a nice, medicinal cup of tea with me?” 

The tips of Katara’s ears blushed but she laughed for the first time in a long time and accepted a bone-china teacup from her genial uncle figure. She wasn’t entirely sure when Iroh had become as close to her as Bato, if not closer, but she didn’t have any complaints. 

If either of them noticed that she was still stroking Zuko’s hair, neither mentioned it. 

\- 

“So I seem to recall a certain upstart waterbender threatening me to never leave her sight.” He was well enough for Katara to swat him, so she did. 

“Oh, you’ll be just fine without my constant babying.” 

The exhausted Firelord chuckled, lounging in a windowseat that looked out over the garden she always found herself in when she was in the Fire Nation capital. 

It was a good look on him, she decided. Exhausted from a hard day’s work, going prematurely white from stress but just at the temples, and smiling like they were swapping stories before bed. 

“’Babying’ is it? Master Katara, Firelords don’t need to be _babied_.” He mustered the energy to look momentarily offended before slouching back against the window. 

Katara chuckled and waved him off. “Two can play that game, _Firelord_ Zuko.” She looked down her nose at him long enough to get him chuckling before slouching and smiling back at him. 

He wondered if she knew her nose scrunched when she got him to laugh. He wondered if she would punch him if he called it cute. Probably, he decided. 

“But Katara, I can’t run this country by staying within the palace walls. I bring the security detail with me, but I _have_ to be out there with my people.” 

She grinned to hear the protective note in his voice when he talked about his country and its inhabitants. 

“What?” He asked, misinterpreting her grin as jokingly condescending but smirking back all the same. 

She shook her head. 

“I can think of a way that will keep us both happy. You, able to be out amongst your people and me being able to keep an eye on you.” 

Zuko tried very hard to keep the hope from shining through his eyes. 

“Oh? I value your advice, Katara. Always have.” 

…Zuko did, she realized. 

That was a refreshing change. 

“Simple, really. I stay here, in the Fire Nation, helping open hospitals and teaching waterbending to healers.” Katara didn’t know if the look in his eyes was for himself or for his country, but she dearly hoped it was for the former. 

“You would stay? Katara, don’t the Poles need you? The Earth Kingdom always needs waterbenders, I’m told. You could go anywhere, do anything.” _Why stay with me?_ his heart pleaded with hers. Katara already knew the answer. 

“Hm…I could.” She agreed, looking thoughtful. Even now, he was giving her an out. Not tying her down or making her a second-in-command. She loved him for it. She smiled. “But then you would have to come with me.” 

Zuko balked. 

“My people need me, Katara! Think for a second-“ 

She shushed him with a giggle. 

“I’m not taking you from your people, love. I’m offering to become one of them.” 

She hadn’t seen Zuko blush like _that_ in years. 

“Katara, I can’t- Can’t _rule_ over you. That’s just not right.” 

“Then rule with me.” 

He stopped moving. The medic in Katara made her hone in on his chest to check for breathing. 

“Breathe, Zuko.” 

He gasped and followed her instructions. 

“But Katara- You- I- Aang-“ 

She internally cringed at the name of her ex, but that had been a bit of a mistake. She pressed a gentle finger to his lips to pause the spluttering. 

“Is ancient history. I’m free to make my own decisions, Zuko.” Her gaze softened. “As you’ve reminded me every single time we’ve spoken.” 

The Firelord who ended the 100 year war beside bending masters and the Avatar was still blushing. 

“Well I’ve decided. Do you want to join me in fixing up the world?” 

He smiled beneath her finger and took her hand gently. 

“I would be honored.” 

\- 

“You WHAT?!” Sokka yelled over the table before Suki and Toph shoved him back into his seat. 

“Easy Snoozles, you almost knocked over my noodles!” Toph kicked him for good measure. He glared ineffectually at her while rubbing his shin. 

“Besides, I think you’re the last one to figure it out, Sokka.” Suki chuckled. 

Sokka deflated. 

“Fine, but.” He stood up and made his way around the table to where the Firelord sat smirking at his friends. Zuko made a strangled noise as his best male friend picked him up by the front of his robes and hauled him up to his face. 

“Break her heart and I know where you live, Sparky.” 

Toph lost it at the drop of her nickname for their friend, holding her belly and cackling. Zuko had the good grace to look nervous. 

“Yeah, I know.” 

Katara whacked her brother in the hip. 

“What have we talked about when it comes to gender roles and my ability to make decisions for myself?” She reminded him, not even looking up from her soup to raise an eyebrow at him. Her tone was cold enough to freeze him to the spot. 

Her brother laughed nervously and patted Zuko on the shoulders. 

“C-come on Katara, I don’t have any more little sisters to bully the boyfriends of! This is my only chance! Give me this one! Just one?” 

She could feel his giant hamsterpuppy eyes trying to bore through her defenses. Her eyebrow twitched. 

“Sokka…” She warned. Katara heard her brother’s knees hit the stone floor of the shop as he pleaded. 

“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease, Katara?” 

“Sokka…” Katara met her fiance’s eyes over her brother’s wolf tail. He wanted to say more, but he knew she didn’t need his help. She smirked and he returned it. “Sokka, you make it sound like _I_ asked _her_.” 

Katara smirked into her tea and Toph fell out of her chair cackling. 

\- 

This time when Zuko held Katara to his chest in the low candlelight, her hands crafted a child over her gently swelling stomach that had had tiny hands that would hold the nation. 

_This time_ , Katara thought, _this time it’s right._

**Author's Note:**

> I hold that Katara is pro-choice, but she was startled.


End file.
